How to Handle a Troll

If you have a blog, especially if you blog on topics that might be personal or political or contentious, then you may run into trolls. If you are going to blog seriously, then you need to know how to deal with them. This article will help: How To Handle A Troll, and Beat Them at Their Own Game.

While this article is aimed at usenet users, for bloggers, alot still applies. However, one thing I would recommend is that you moderate all your comments. It helps to nip trolls in the bud. Also, I am not sure I care to beat them. I am happy just to see them move along.

Related

5 responses to “How to Handle a Troll”

Not really a troll (but similar as far as I am concerned), I recently just got my second comment (not caught as spam by WordPress) from a store or site trying to sell their product, making a nice comment to a related post in my blog (shoes, digital photo frame).

I am surprised about this because there really is no traffic in my blog (only my Mommy reads my blog).

Good thing I have review comments first (as you also have) so I can just delete this so it is not automatically posted.

When I used to have my blog, I thought about the moderation and stuff. Personally, I disagree with the whole moderation thing.

I believe a blog should be promoting free communication (trolls and all). However, I do at minimum want to prevent “anonymous”. Though I believe in open communication, anonymous communication is not something I would encourage.

“If you have to say something, then say it as yourself”

As such when I was running the blog, I at minimum required openID or google ID to be used to authenticate the user.

Problem with that Archimedes is that you have a high chance of readers leaving. Who wants to stay in a blog/forum where negativity abounds. After a while they leave. I’ve seen this happen on many blogs where owners were not liberal with the delete button. It’s your blog no one should tell you how to think, how your blog tone should be etc. or be insulting you on your own blog.

I think you may both be right, depending on the context. Archie is highly technical, as is his blog, and his openness may make alot of sense on his blog. That said, on other blogs, especially blogs that deal with social or political topics, such openness can backfire. My own feeling is that a blog is a bit like a party: you want people to feel comfortable and open up, but if you let people get out of hand, it ruins it for everyone. The trick is to apply just the right amount of governance to it: to be a good host.